Hunter’s POVI woke up slowly and angrily. My back was pressed against the cell bars, which I’d crunched out of shape, but not broken, with my fall. I was dazed but not badly hurt.I didn’t know who I wanted to kill first. I looked up and my gaze found Colin. He was shaking in his boots, staring back at me like I might bite his head off. And maybe I should, the traitor. But it wasn’t him I ached to kill. The real Alpha Colin was little more than a wet wipe. Leif was down and, from the looks of it, bleeding out. It wouldn’t take much to finish the job and maybe he deserved to die bloody and slow.It was Keila I hated most of all. Keila, who was on something that made her impossible to hurt, apparently. ‘I don’t see that as a bad thing, Hunter!’ said Reg, baring his teeth at her. ‘It means we can hurt her for longer. And I bet you want to, after all that embarrassing stuff she made you do!’‘If you ever tell anyone about that shit, Reg, I’ll kick your ass all the way back to the Moon
Hunter’s POVJane stepped forward and gripped the bars. I padded over to the chest in the corner and shifted out, reaching into it and dressing in someone’s button-up shirt and trousers before I turned back to face her. ‘I would tell you to be a gentleman and get Jane some clothes, too, but she scratched my perfect face,’ Reg huffed. ‘What will my fans say when they see it? What if it scars?’‘It won’t scar. You’re an Alpha wolf, dummy. It’s already healing.’I grabbed a handful of clothes out for her and marched over to Jane’s cell. Four pairs of eyes watched me go; the other prisoners were waiting for their sentence to come. They’d be waiting a while. I needed to know what they knew, but I needed to fix things with Jane first.Everything was crumbling around me. I had to start putting things back together – and fast. “Here.” I passed the clothes through the bars to Jane. She crossed her arms and ignored me.“You forced me in here,” she said coldly. “I don’t want anything from you.
Hunter‘s POVReg hadn’t stopped shaking his butt since I’d told him we were going home. Even with an unconscious Jane to contend with, Leif and Keila both still alive and kicking, and Alpha Colin now conscious and staring at me with his thumb in his fucking mouth, Reg seemed determined to be in the most irritatingly good mood he could be.‘Back! To! The! Storm! Pack!’ He punctuated every word with another ass shake. ‘Reg, focus!’ I snapped.‘Sorry, Hunter! I’m just so excited! Things can go back to how they used to be, only I’m waaaay richer now, and even more famous and popular than you are. Ian and I can hang out, and eat all the hot wings we like, and watch back old episodes of Alpha’s Toy, and my new episodes, and we can gossip about girls, and I can devote more time to helping Ian find his mate!’ He whined suddenly. ‘Hunter, I wish we could look for our mate. I don’t like Amy anymore. She’s mean.’‘Oh my god.’ I glared at him. ‘You wanted Jane. When you finally got Jane, you dec
Jane’s POVEverything was dark and foggy. My body felt heavy, too heavy to move, and my brain struggled to make sense of the world around me. My eyelids wouldn’t open and all I could feel was a rumbling, bouncing sensation beneath – or was it around? – me.Smooth, warm leather pressed against my bare arm. Something nestled closer to me, a slack face nudging against my bicep, and my heart ached. That something felt more like a someone, someone I knew better than myself and loved with more than just the force of my heart. It felt like Owen, who always slept with his mouth open and his head tilted back.I couldn’t remember where I was or what was going on, but I did know that it couldn’t be my sweet Owen. Another burst of heat scrambled around on my other side, and an aggravated little sigh that sounded so much like Ares made my heart twist. This was a cruel dream, but it was one I didn’t want to wake up from.I vaguely recognised S’s flat, emotionless voice. “–It didn’t work on the chil
Jane’s POVI woke up in a surprisingly nice room. Even in my drug-fogged mind, I’d thought I’d known what to expect when I opened my eyes. I was no stranger to being bullied, hurt, and kidnapped, after all, and I’d seen the inside of a dungeon’s cells too many times to expect to see this.I sat up slowly, the plush mattress shifting beneath me as my weight moved. There were silk sheets on the bed, all a pale sage green in colour, and four fat pillows propped up behind me. A soft blanket had been slung over the top of the duvet, too, which fell to the gnarled oak floorboards below. My boys, I thought, my spine prickling. My gaze darted to the two still figures, curled together beneath the duvet of one of the two single beds in the room. I let out a relieved sigh. They were safe. The hastily thrown-off duvet on the other bed told me that one of my sons had climbed in with the other. My heart pinched. My perfect, snow angel sons were back here, in the one place I’d never, ever intended
Jane’s POV“Jane?” Hunter prompted me gently, sounding so much like Colin that I took a staggering step backwards. Some emotion flickered across his face, but he was getting quicker at masking it now. “What do you think?” he asked, his voice flat and disinterested once more.I nibbled on my bottom lip. What I wanted to do was attack him and run with my sons, but without Ina I didn’t think we’d get very far. I had to go along with what he wanted – for now.It could benefit me, though. If I worked as a doctor here, I’d have access to equipment and ingredients that I could use to make new poisons. I’d feel a lot safer being back in the Storm pack if I had my glass vials jangling at my waist.The thing that worried me most were his honey-sweet words about Ares and Owen having a home and an education. That was all I’d ever wanted for them, but not here. Never here. If they got settled, made friends, forged a life, would I be able to drag them away?I set my jaw. We wouldn’t be here long en
Ares’s POVI couldn’t tell Mom.It was all Owen’s fault, really. He was the one who’d hacked his way into Mom’s computer. He was the one who’d found the deleted parts of her search history. He was the one – Who was I kidding? I’d looked at the laptop screen, too. I’d seen the two words that had changed everything for us: Hunter Burns. She’d searched it so many times! Mom was always reading up on this guy. It hadn’t clicked straight away. Owen had pointed out how similar we looked; Owen had zoomed into every part of his face, detailing the shape and colour of his eyes and how much they looked like ours.They didn’t just look like ours, though. They were identical.Hunter Burns was our dad.Owen had felt bad when he’d realised. “I think we should stop looking.” He’d tried to close the laptop, but I’d shot my hand over and shoved it open again before he could. “Ares,” he’d sighed, sounding so much like Mom that I’d looked around nervously, “we won’t find anything good.”“Yeah,” I’d his
Jane’s POVI crept over to the window and peered out. ‘He’s definitely down there, girl!’ cried Ina. ‘I can sniff him out! Sniff, sniff, sniff! I’ve got you now, Colin!’“Kim can smell him too, Mom,” said Ares. I twisted around and looked at him curiously; he shrugged. “He told me to tell you.”“He’s got a good nose,” Owen said seriously. ‘Has he followed us?” I asked Ina, frowning down into the darkness outside. He stepped into a pool of light, which spilled out from one of the windows on the ground floor. He waved up at me dorkily, grinning widely and stumbling around clumsily, so great was the force of his wave. He looked so much like the Colin I knew, the fake one, that my heart twinged. For a second, it was like none of the last few days had happened. I was Jane and he was Colin, and we were in love. He was sweet and goofy and protective; my walls were coming down, more and more, day by day, and I was able to see beyond my past and into what our future might hold.The image f